


The lesser crime

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angels, Community: fic_promptly, Devils, Gen, Reichenbach Falls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-27
Updated: 2012-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:52:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Sherlock, A devil on the side of the angels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The lesser crime

He already knows how he will end the conversation when Remiel drops by. Souls are rotting in Sherlock's cupboards, the grey of their tainted visions soaking through their entirety, and he has to weigh them today. No time for notices. He needs to order his discoveries on Heaven's shelves before he migrates to the much messier shelves of Hell. Only he and God understand the alignment of the universe's information here, and as God grows feeble enough to neglect his duties, it is only for Sherlock to learn. He already knows Remiel will tell him—

"—this is beyond 'a mild psychological condition' you experiment with, Sherlock! By the Registry of Revelations, 22:1, you cannot extend the waters of rebirth to souls without divine consent. Should you continue your work, we have no choice but to cease our consulting license with your kind—"

"Remiel," the experimenter says, adding a lighter soul to one side of his scale, "kindly stop talking."

"—what I have told you, but did you ever listen?"

"The vibrations of your voice will disturb the balance. Although it could be possible to account for it, were you not disrupting my thinking process by speaking of such useless things as well."

"You shall be removed from your residence," Remiel continues with the helpless squirm of a soul trying to wriggle out of banishment. Sherlock's hand closes on the would-be escapee and deposits it carefully in the centre of a circle of darker, hungrier ones. "There is no appeal against it. I suggested yesterday that you should leave, before they—"

He shades his eyelids downward a fraction. "You have already expressed your point." More than a fifth, that would be unnoticed, but less than half, lest it be interpreted as a blink. He never blinks when so much remains to be _seen_. "I will jump back when I am ready for it."

\- -

"Burnt to a crisp," Sherlock explains.

Moriarty has never forgiven Sherlock for burning his reputation as the smartest of the devils. Never will Moriarty forgive Sherlock for his return, the newest of them, calling him no better than a human child acting up for a toffee apple.

\- -

The day dawns drizzly and cloudy. The clouds hang heavy the entire day, probably with the tears of an angelic council's frustration as they finally catch up to what everyone plans to do. Sherlock throws his own in the air with it because they were supposed to show up, earlier, so he won't have to do this, but he doesn't have the friends up there to simply put in a request for divinely induced headaches for John.

He already knows they will come for him. His coat balloons out behind him, nowhere near so graceful as feathers but all he has to do is roll and tuck and, and the panic of dropping without his wings this time chops through his flesh all the way to his scaly heart and particular pressure and there, he's never so enjoyed the slam of angelic force against his face. He is fine. It will produce a reasonable amount of blood, and he isn't dead, and what would trauma feel like? He has fallen much farther, back when the Collective Heavens thought they were better off with him below. 

From his shelf in the crypt, the air cooled enough to gift him some clarity without warm bodies by his side, Sherlock says, "Thank you."

"We— we won't go and restore you."

"You and your deductions." He allows the angel a corner of his mouth upturned: no teeth, and all the more danger-sweet for it. "Do stay with what you do best, yes?"

"We won't come and save you either next time."

"Oh, you lot were only my third option anyway," Sherlock says. He turns away to frown privately to himself, this one a reaction that actually reaches his cheeks and tear ducts, and never looks straight at Remiel again.


End file.
